


Books, Phones and Coffee [Nightling/Vampire! Woozi | Jihoon]

by CurrentlyWoozi



Series: Cold ~ Lee Jihoon/Woozi [1]
Category: K-pop, SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: @damn-jongdae-slay, F/M, Nightling! AU, Nightling! Jihoon, Nightling! Woozi, OC/Jihoon, Vampire! AU, Vampire! Jihoon, Vampire! Woozi, on tumblr
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 05:50:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10237253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CurrentlyWoozi/pseuds/CurrentlyWoozi
Summary: With that singular touch of her precious warm hand,Her finger slowly skimming his porcelain cheek.And as his eyes fell upon her delicate soul,It was then he knew,She had captured every ounce of his being.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fanfiction for Lee Jihoon/Woozi, a member of Seventeen. This fic is also going to be posted on Tumblr by the username @damn-jongdae-slay.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

It was always cold for him, always dark in his little world, the world he had lived in forever and he could never get out of because there was no way for him to even do so, it was his punishment to be stuck in this eternally dying world and he himself could never die, would have to watch all he saw die slowly.

He had stopped talking to humans a long time ago, he had noticed how they were temporary fixes to his loneliness, their deaths too quick for his eternity and their blood mostly tangy from their many sins, just like his was poison from his.

It was the blood of the nightlings like him which tasted the best, the poison to match the ones which ran in his vein, so being in a clan was a dangerous decision, but since most of the boys would have ripped him apart if he had tried to drink from any of them, since the drinking was not a thing of lesser importance such as hunger but a soul bond between two creatures of the night, a promise more holy and more ancient than any human bond.

But he had never in his small eternity found a nightling who had been worthy of a soul bond to him, never actually felt anything after his turning like most creatures of night however he knew that many in his clan could feel very well, their emotions humane in a way, because they had soul bonded with the one who had urged a feeling, and had kept their reward forever.

Himself, he had long forgotten how it felt to feel.

Maybe it was yet another punishment for some sin he had commited back centuries ago when he had died, some sin he had forgotten most probably in the first century straying away from it.

The closest to feeling he ever got was when he surrounded himself in music, drowned himself into the tones and notes, each quaver and semiquaver important as for once he lost himself completely. This was he had ended up calling home, a messy attic with a huge piano and musical instruments ranging from centuries to recent, all of which he had slowly learnt to play to himself, to his one soul bonded.

At the very moment, he was lounging on the sofa he had provided for himself in his attic, his "bed" of sorts as a human would say, however he rarely slept, the few times he did quite haunting to remember as they would show him the most bizarre of visions.

Seokmin quite often said that dreaming in sleep was switching with your soul bonded’s eyes, seeing what they were in which case, Jihoon’s soul bonded clearly saw some very interesting places, after all he usually woke up, feeling like he had climbed ten hills, his limbs close to actually falling off from exertion, the pain nothing more than an irritation but still enough of it to distract him from his music.

Jihoon wasn’t the softest of his clan, that honour would go to Seungkwan, who held great emotions in him as he had been turned by his soul bonded and had thus never suffered what he had, had never not felt emotion, had never lost whatever wisp of imagination humans liked to call hope.

Jihoon got up from the sofa in a fluid, graceful motion, his feet making no noise as they stepped down the stairs from his attic to the ground floor of their house as he slipped on a coat, for the sake of looking normal among the humans who walked outside, his features mostly covered by the oversized scarf as he stuck his always cold hands into his pockets and walked off into the human realm, into the experience he would never feel.

While he avoided most contact with humans, he found them extremely fascinating, there had been many a day where he had simply sat by his window for days and watched the humans walk past, wondering what they were doing but after he had caught himself waiting for the mail man to arrive at the human house across the street, he stopped looking as it felt like he had become too invested in the lives of the short living humans on the street.

However, he had found one humane thing other than music which he adored with no par, coffee.

He visited the neighbourhood coffee shop every evening, to take a cup of warm coffee for himself and then take it with him outside where he would sit alone in the park and watch as the people strolled past, completely ignoring him which always stung slightly as even though he knew he didn’t even want them to look at him, it just stung some small part of him which hadn’t been turned stone cold.

While he could never truly drink the coffee, as he had once tried to which led in him vomiting it up along with his morning blood behind a bush and then having to move his spot away for a week until things went back to normal, but he liked to feel the sensation of something normal, something so simple yet humane, that it warmed him and his cold hands.

So he would buy one for himself and sit there in the park, often humming a slow tune if he had been composing the hour before as he mostly was, and thus keeping himself going as yet more years passed of his eternal life, alone yet somewhat emptily content.

He sat in his usual seat in the park at the very moment, his mind blurry from the shortage of blood which his clan had been suffering lately, they tried their best to stick to the blood of animals which surprisingly didn’t taste that bad compared to the sinful blood of the humans as most animals they drank from were prey, not predators, however availabilitlity of animal blood was getting worse so they had started taking from the slaughterhouses, where a human had been turned a few decades ago and still worked there, the blood from his animals always their meals these days.

He took a deep breath in, the air filling his dead lungs, it wasn’t essential to him however he found himself never losing the habit to breathe, even after centuries of being this way. The park air was sweetened by the scents of the flowers when he sat here near them, but on the days where he would walk around the park, the blood of the humans around him would make him want to burn, so sinful and so sour to let alone taste, but breathe.

He found that human children were the best to be around if he had to interact as they were still soft, had not done any crimes, were naive and innocent in the cruel world. So he often sat there too, a light smile gracing his features as he watched them run around so freely, so endearingly clumsy that he wanted to simply pull these children in for a hug, even though they wuld push him away since he was cold unknown, like he had always been.

He was going to move towards the house again, dump the now cold coffee into a bin and stick his slightly warmer hands into his pockets to preserve that heat as he would laze back and drop onto the sofa with the others of his clan, where they would either talk or do as they wish, when the small thud of someone seating themselves on his bench made him freeze.

No-one ever sat next to him, at least not a human, they never dared. He seemed distant and ice like to them, as he had often thought about why nobody ever approached him, but today it was a human, a human girl over all things, sitting next to him on the little bench.

He dared to look at the girl next to him, and found himself almost struck by how beautiful she was, both inside and outside, her blood seemingly sweeter than those who walked around her, that familiar pungent smell of human blood seemingly vanished around her, instead a sugary, fragrant smell and for once he wondered how a human’s, the girl’s blood would taste.

He saw her in her details, thanks to his enhanced sense, only heightened by the fascinating human who had sat down next to him, and saw her long eyelashes, her eyes glued to a book which she held in her small hands, the sweater she was wearing much too big for her small frame but seemingly warm as she seemed so comfortable, sitting next to him and for a moment, he lost himself into wondering what the girl was so fascinated by in a few words on a page, a hobby his fellow clan member and friend, Wonwoo also shared.

He couldn’t help but peer lightly over her sweater-clad shoulder to see what exactly this fascination had rooted from, but maybe in his curiosity he had lost sense of what humans found comfortable and what not, and most likely the human girl would not find a random boy peering over her shoulder to read in any way comfortable.

"Um, excuse me?"

Her voice was soft, soft enough for music to be made using it, but it awoke him from his trance of wonder and he shook himself back to reality, his dark eyes growing bigger as he looked at the girl and for a second was sure that if he had any human blood running through him, he would have blushed a bright pink.

"Oh, I-I am so sorry, it just seemed that you were so fascinated by the book and I was wondering what could possibly be so interesting in a few words and I just-"

"Words? Books are a way of life, mister."

She seemed to suck the air out from around her, it seemed to never fill his lungs enough as he stuttered to find an answer against her arguement, her passion for the subject obvious in her eyes, as she looked at him, those big eyes aflame with a challenge to try her on the subject.

"Books are the reason we live in the civilised world we do today, their stories are inspiration and legends, they are written by those who weave worlds right from the power of thoughts and a vivid imagination. And you, mister, clearly have not read a book to show you what a true fantasy each book is, a gateway to a realm which will never be but one which can be experienced through this beautiful piece of literature."

It fascinated him as the quiet human from only a few minutes ago had been ripped away by a girl with so much character in her, so much passion that it blinded her as to whether he was even speaking anymore, his arguement already given up as he understood how frustrating it was when someone dissed your art and then refused to understand the importance of an art to the world, it was how he felt when people asked why he made music which was never heard by anybody, it was his music, he would do whatever he liked with it, it was his art.

"I guess I haven’t experienced this art yet"

His own face adorning a shyer smile, a small one which seemed to snap the girl out of her rant as she realised that she had began to ramble on about a subject the boy had already bowed out of.

"Forgive me for rambling on, but maybe you should read a good book? I can give one to you if you like"

She said, scrambling for her book bag which rested on the ground, pulling it up onto her lap and ruffling through the many papers within it before removing a small hard-covered book with the title of "Nightmare" and placing it into his hands, her flustered eyes checking her watch, as he watched them grow bigger in shock as she stood up from the bench, stuffing the book she herself had been reading into her bag, leaving the one he was holding in his hands as she swung the bag onto her shoulders.

"Um, you can keep the book. Oh wait no, it is one of my favourities and I will want it back so um .."

She seemed to be so adorably flustered that for a few minutes Jihoon could simply watch her with idle awe, as she retrieved a pen from her bag and scribbled her name and a series of numbers onto the first page of the book.

"You can give me a call once you are done or something, right? Yeah, okay bye!"

Without letting him answer her question, and give her book back, she ran off, scurrying down the rock path of the park, leaving him in the cold among the flowers, a book in his hand and an uncharacteristically soft smile gracing his features.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

He had reached back home and instead of lazing into the common room where his friends were lying around, he shot straight up back into his attic, locking the door as he collapsed into his trusty chair, the book thrown onto the table as he wheeled away from it, visibly shaken from the experience.

He had lost complete track of time once the girl had left and had simply stared at the book for god knows how long, just touching the gently worn out spine, the clear indication that it was a well-read and loved book and that the fact it was favourite of the girls was beyond question.

It also seemed to hold some of her scent, a light rosemary fragrance which made him sniffle as it was incredibly pleasant and also because he vaguely remembered loving rosemary in his human life and it made him wonder where the book had been before.

He had also realised the very irony of the book in his hands, the title being "Nightmare" and his species often being the very inspiration for such a word in the human language.

However hard he tried, he couldn’t bring himself to open the book, it felt like it held something personal for the girl but convincing himself that if it was really so precious, she wouldn’t have given it away so easily to some random stranger on the street, he opened up to the first page of the book and let his finger brush against the oddly familiar texture of the paper before his eyes fell on the bright blue ink on the corner of the page, memory of the girl scribbling her name and numbers on to the page coming back to him.

He looked up towards the corner of the page and let himself read through the small message which went something as follows:

"Hello ignorant stranger, this book is something you can read to live through a new realm, tell me how it was when you give it back to me! I had to go because I have class however I am So Hee and when you are done, just call me on this number xxx-xxx-xxxx."

So Hee, that was a beautiful name, one befitting for its owner, Jihoon thought, realising how cringey his thoughts were only a moment later which caused him to cringe outwards into himself before turning to the next page of the book, the one where the story truly began.

There was no read for him to read the book, however for some reason unbeknownst to him, he didn’t want to disappoint the bright, human girl.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

"Hyung, have you finally gone insane?"

Hyung? It must be Chan then.

"And why do you say so, Chan?"

"You are reading a book"

"So?"

"I j-just?"

"Alright Chan, if you are done?"

"Yeah okay bye"

Jihoon hadn’t come down from his attic for about two days, and while that was pretty habitual as sometimes when he had the idea for a song, the melody just had to be composed instantly or he wouldn’t be able to do anything else, it shocked everybody to also see that there was no music streaming from the top floor of the house, like there always was when he was composing.

So the boys had sent their youngest up to see what had turned out of Jihoon and the youngest had been pretty shaken up when he came back down before plonking himself down on the sofa, which caused his elders to ask him what exactly was happening up there.

"He .. is reading"

"Jihoon?"

"Yeah, some book he has from I don’t know where but he just seemed so .. intrigued by the words"

A distant cheer filled the room, as Wonwoo overheard the conversation, a smile breaking out onto the boy’s face as he realised that somebody else in the house was reading other than them.

"Channie, did you see which book he was reading?", spoke an excited Wonwoo, almost bustling in his seat, because gods no one in this house seemed to read and now, he finally had someone else to talk about books.

"Night-Nightmare!", the younger spoke up as the memory hit him of his Jihoon-hyung simply lounging in his seat, his piano untouched as he read the words on the page, his lip between his teeth, his fangs lightly biting into it as he pulled his legs up to sit cross-legged, an almost worried expression taking over his features as he simply browsed through the page, his eyes vivid with attention and an avid interest.

"Hmm, it is not one of my books then. I don’t have a book called that", the taller mused before getting up off the sofa and heading off to his own room, which was less of a room and more of a library, full of any book he could have possibly laid his hands on, most probably to check if he did indeed own such a book.

While the boys discussed Jihoon’s sudden interest in a book, a light gasp sounded through the house, a soft noise which if they hadn’t been gifted with enhanced hearing would most probably not have heard, but it wasn’t the gasp which was out of the place [considering the drama queens they housed] but the owner of the voice, the slightly whimsical pitch owned by their quiet Jihoon-hyung.

Meanwhile, Jihoon had returned to his book almost instantly after Chan had left the group and had been sucked into its almost addicting story once again, the story of the girl who was a musician and sang every night in her small practice room only for a voice to sing back to her, the answer to her music, however whenever she would go to the next practice room to see who her mysterious duet partner was, there would be no-one.

It was a simple story, a story where the girl fell in love for the voice and emotions of the boy who she had never seen and it hit him right where it meant to, as someone who was so scared of showing his true colors, the fact that someone had fallen in love with an other based on their voice, his own strength, was beautiful.

The gasp had just sounded from him as a natural response to the plot twist of the book, the boy who sang back was a ghost, a supernatural being who had never experienced love before but the girl struck to him and when there was love for the two, he sang for her to come to him, finally ready to show her who he was, and had ended up scaring her, making her hurt.

And what happened next, Jihoon was still to know but he was ready for it, the ending whether it be sad or happy, he didn’t care. He just wanted the ghost boy, who he had cpme to sympathise with, to be happy with or without the girl, even though her reaction was only natural he supposed for a human.

Maybe he only felt the tug to the ghost boy because deep inside he knew that this story was a way of his own life, his only confidence his voice, not his fine body or honed senses like the other boys, but his only human feature, his voice.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

He had finished the book.

It had taken every ounce of himself to finally close the book at its horribly sad ending but he had done it and once he did, he found himself back in his world, out of the practice rooms int the story, outside of the small park where the story ends and back into his own overly extended existence.

The book had tore him apart at the end, with the soft ghost boy understanding that for her to return to happiness and leave her fright of him, he couldn’t see her anymore and that she had to forget, so he makes a deal with a fallen angel, where if his soul is returned to the underworld, the girl will forget about his existence and go on with her life and the last sentence the boy spoke hit him so hard, he almost fell of his chair.

"I never want to be your nightmare again"

It hit him so hard, that even Jihoon’s emotionless body reacted by curling up into a ball, his eyes shut as he tried to remove the image his brain had created of the situation, the broken ghost boy tearing himself down piece by piece so the girl who he had loved, the human who had taken his inexistent heart away would live a happy life.

But it was over, and he calmed himself down right after screaming his dead lungs out at the book, which caused many of the boys to rush upstairs to see if he was alright, which at the point, soulfully he really wasn’t.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

But now he sat with a new challenge, meeting the girl to return the gods damned book.

The girl had only left her name, So Hee, and a series of numbers on the first page, the numbers he had memorized the very first day he had started to read the book, but had given no other information, like a house address or a place to return the book.

The numbers had been to "call her" but how in the world was he supposed to do that?

He had tried chanting the numbers, but that had only resulted in bringing up one of those pesky demons who he then had to send back. He had even tried writing the numbers down a few hundred times to see if it achieved anything, however she was not "called".

The girl hadn’t shown up in the park either, and he had tried venturing farther than his coffee shop but the disgusting smell of the humans around him grew so suffocating that he had ran back home almost instantly and now he had finally reached all levels of desperateness.

He was going to go ask Seungkwan for help.

As Seungkwan had been human quite recently and had only turned a few years ago, Jihoon assumed he knew how to summon the girl and however embarrassing it was to go ask one of his youngest for help, but at this point he wanted to return the book to the girl and ask her if she could give another one to him, since her choice seemed much better than Wonwoo’s, who’s library Jihoon had already sacked through and had found that the boy read not much after sappy love stories by some dead human called Shakespeare and comics.

Jihoon knocked the door of Seungkwan’s room, knowing that for those who had found their soul bonded already, entering rooms without permission could be a grave mistake [not that he totally hadn’t walked into such embarassment before]. 

"Seungkwanie! Hyung needs help with something?"

"Yeah sure hyung, come in!"

Jihoon opened the door and let himself in, closing the door as he brought the book along with him and sat next to the younger boy who was currently watching something on the magical box which seemed to tell stories, something he had introduced to the boys as a Television.

"What did you need my help for, hyung? Please don’t tell me Seungcheol hyung forgot how the mixer works again since I might actually break my head on something if I have to teach him that again"

"Oh no, it is just help for me"

"Have you finally decided to get a computer for your compositions rather than going all Mozart and doing it on paper and a tape recorder?"

"A what?"

"Nothing hyung, what did you need?"

"How do you summon people with such numbers?"

Jihoon asked, the numbers mentioned, the perplexing problem the girl had left for him to solve as she had run off, in front of the younger boy on the corner of the book, sure that even Seungkwan, who had considerably less knowledge than him, would be confused.

"Hyung, do you seriously not know how to call?"

"That is exactly what I am asking you to tell me how to do, you little punk"

"Hyung, phones are so easy to use"

"A what?"

"A phone, hyung! Wait, do you want me to help you out and get you one?"

"A ph-phone? Okay fine. Let’s go get this. Where do you get it?"

"In a shop"

"Seungkwan, I think we told you that the devils are not a way to 'online shop’"

"No hyung, a .. human shop"

"Oh okay, let us go"

So, the unusual duo made their way into the town, both slightly suffocated by the pungent human blood however Seungkwan dragged Jihoon through it before they entered into a bright human shop and Jihoon felt extremely old for the first time.

Seungkwan seemed to know what was happening and what all the rectangles of glass and light seemed to be however Jihoon was confused, what was this, how did this come to be, how had these humans managed to make smaller televisions, he had no idea.

It took Seungkwan only a few minutes to buy a "phone" before he wreaked havoc on the "essential accessories" as he claimed, going towards the shelves of leather cases in the same shapes as these phones and thousands of little things which people in the shop were walking around sticking to their own lit up rectangles.

"Hyung is quite manly so he will probably like one of those black designs."

Then the two browsed slowly through the shelves picking out little things which Jihoon would like to keep on his phone but they ended up only purchasing the phone, a dark black case with stars falling from each side when it moved and a pair of music note earphones, all of which Jihoon had no idea what to do with.

When they returned home with a small bag containing the items, the boys surrounded them extremely curious as Seungkwan basically explained what it was in the box to them and then Jihoon’s lesson on phones began as Seungkwan explained each and every small detail.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

It had taken him four days to understand how the phone works and after four days he had been able to not only call the house phone which had scared atleast 10 of the boys since no-one except Seungkwan knew what the damn thing even was, but had also managed to take a shaky picture of his eyes and his room along with a random video of Seungkwan laughing his ass off at his hyung and the boys downstairs.

It was on the evening of the fourth day with his phone that he called the girl, the beeps coming in before they cut off suddenly and he took a sudden intake of useless air, before clearing his throat to speak as the honey-like voice of the girl from the park floated through the phone.

"Hello, this is me Jihoon, I am the boy you had given Nightmare to in the park?"

He began, his voice steady but his hands not, they were shaking for some unknown reason as he gripped the book in his left hand, and the phone in the other. 

"Ah yes, have you finished the book already?"

"Yes, I have."

"It was good, wasn’t it?"

"I take back what I said at the park, books are masterpieces waiting to be unveiled."

"Ah I knew it would change your mind, Jihoon-ah"

His name in her voice seemed foreign to him, her voice spoke it much more musically than his did, a little tune it seemed rather than a word. He also realised how relaxed he was talking to the girl from the phone where she could only hear his voice, and not face to face like their first encounter where he had gone so unaudible in his speech, she hadn’t even noticed that he had spoken.

"It did"

"However, would you like to give it back now?"

"Yes, I was just calling to see if you are free in the evening tommorow so I can return it to you back at the park?"

“I can make it! I will be there by five tommorrow?”

“Yeah alright! See you then, bye”

He said, quickly ending their phone conversation and placing the phone on the table, calming his rapid breaths before looking towards the doors and breaking into a little smirk.

“Soonyoung-ah, if you are going to listen, you may as well come in and do so rather than lurking by the door”

“Gods Jihoon, I will never get used to your creepy sense of people”

“Nobody asked you to be used to it so deal with it”

“Jesus, who were you talking to? You seemed so .. friendly”

“How rude. Are you implying that I am not friendly to you boys?”

“No, but that was a girl, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, yes it was”

“Maybe you should take her flowers for your date”

And as soon as the words slip past Soonyoung’s lips, Jihoon found himself embarrassed, his hands starting to fidget, the basic indication that he was “blushing” like humans did.

“It is not a date, Soonyoung”

“It sure sounds like you want it to be one though”

“Oh shut up”

But maybe he did want to meet the girl too much, maybe it wasn’t just for returning her book.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 


End file.
